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Gender is a social construction in that it consists of things/activities/roles associated with a particular gender. But gender identity is not a social construct. For transgender people it's their gender identity that's the issue not their gender roles (although social pressure to conform to gender roles can be problematic).

The main reason why there is a disconnect between the feminist and transgender communities is because we're not defining gender in the same way. The feminist community takes gender as gender roles + gender expression + gender identity, whereas the transgender community takes gender as just gender identity.

So when a feminist person talks about gender, they're typically talking about everything that is considered gendered in society (toys, style, work, etc.), whereas a transgender person is typically limiting this to just the internal feeling of being a man, woman, or something else along or outside of the binary.

You see, the two communities aren't disagreeing, they're actually just talking about different things while using the same word.

You're making the unscientific assumption that neuro-anatomy correlates to gender which is unproven in this (neurology deals in physical terms, therefore speaks of sex (male/female and everything imbetween) as opposed to gender (masculine/feminine)). Gender is simply whether or not you behave in a "masculine" or "feminine" manner. It is a sociologically defined term. Sex is whether or not you have two X chromosomes. Sex may (as in I am unconvinced of an intrinsic link) reflect neuro-anatomy, however given that what defines gender changes from culture to culture I highly doubt there is a neuro-anatomical structure which correlates to whether or not one is a man/women (those are the terms for gender not sex) as that definition simply changes region to region. It's probably more likely that certain neuro-anatomical structures correlate to a propensity for certain types of activities which then fit one of the highly polarized categories of masculine/feminine activites(in our particular society) and as a result we end up seeing someone that identifies with the opposite gender due to a mix of biology and social construction.

Pretty much, although I wouldn't go so far as to say born with it because children have ridiculous amounts of neuro-plasticity. I would say born with a predisposition to certain activities, then depending on their environment it may be nurtured. Essentially one's predispositions and environment feed into each other for the over all effect. Aside from that though, that's what I mean.

The brain and emotions do change, look at any number of the journals online of the women who are going through testosterone therapy to change their gender. The best example of this was on the radio show This American Life where they interviewed a feminist lesbian poet who started testosterone therapy and she talked about how she felt like she was becoming a monster when she started taking testosterone as it made her start objectifying and sexualizing the women she saw, as well as making her more aggressive and violent. It's interesting because in that interview she talks about how before she was seen as this edgey butch lesbian poet, but when her physical appearance change to become more male, as well as her emotions changed she became shunned by the community she was in for basically acting like a pig.

Yep, this is true with women. Ironically if men have waaaay too much testosterone they start taking on feminine features and traits (raised voice, balls and dick start to shrink). However, men and women who both have high rates of testosterone have been seen to be leaders and more prone to taking risks.

One could quite easily jump to the conclusion that acting in accordance to your sex-assigned gender is not, at least entirely a social construct.

But such an analysis only makes sense if we already validate particular forms of 'masculinity' and 'feminity' as corresponding with a particular sex. If a women expressing masculinity was more of a 'third gender' culturally speaking, that wouldn't really make sense.

I highly recommend the book Delusions of Gender. It's written by an academic psychologist and looks at the research about sex differences.

She has a long section on toys and the studies in that article. Sure, those studies are interesting, but they're not very conclusive. The hypothesis is generally that female rhesus monkeys play with the stuffed animal or doll because they're more nurturing than the males, but females are not any more nurturing towards actual infant monkeys than the males are at an early age. Males also groom and take care of the infants, but after a year or two, it primarily becomes the females who nurture infants. Interestingly, even females who have been treated with androgens take care of infants more than the males do. That fact, along with the fact that the divergence in care occurs after a year or two suggests that this behavior may actually be socialized in monkeys.

There are some other flaws in the studies as well (for one thing, the monkeys weren't necessarily nurturing the stuffed animals- several got ripped apart).

Also, if you don't mind a quick correction- the terms "transgender people" or "trans* people," are preferred- not "transgendered people". Don't forget that not everyone is male or female (some people are agender/genderfluid/genderqueer/etc. and of course there are intersex individuals as well, which makes your question a bit more complicated.

I would second this recommendation. It's a clearly written, often funny book that points out the flaws in many studies that claim to have found a biological basis for gender differences. (She never addresses transgenderism, however!)

Here is what Lewis Wolpert has to say about Cordelia Fine's "Delusions of Gender": video.

It is worth nothing that when it comes to flaws, Fine's book as been much more severely criticised by the scientific community than the works you refer.

Your critique of the toy selection study for instance, doesn't even concern any potential flaw of the study and the observation of different behaviour between sexes. Simply some evidence that one particular hypothesis may not explain one of the particular observed differences in behaviour.

Also note that the evidences for such differences doesn't rely on one or two studies. On the contrary, it is overwhelming. If you'd like to look into more research, I'll leave you with one of the studies made with younger children. Here is the article "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen.

But the point is that all those actions are interpreted through a cultural lens. We are not exposed to 'pure action', we always have to interpret it, not to mention the variation that inevitably exists within those categories.

if the foetus is male there is a surge of testosterone that causes the male genetalia to develop and also later on in development there is a second surge of testosterone which causes the brain to change.

If you're talking about trans women, I wouldn't use male.

Sometimes the foetus recieves a surge of testosterone that causes a penis to develop, and sometimes later in development there can be a surge of testosterone that causes the brain to change.

At a guess I would say that for comparing a trans person to a cis person, there might be differences in one of those developmental stages. Or there might not.

It seems like there's some unspoken assumptions here: are you assuming that if something is reflected in the physical structure of the brain, it must be inborn and have nothing to do with socialization or life experiences? If so, why assume that?

There's also some fuzziness around what exactly we mean by "gender." When feminist theorists talk about gender as a social construction, they're usually talking about the behaviors, roles, activities and personality traits that a society considers appropriate for a particular gender. But that doesn't correlate perfectly with the kind of gender identity that trans individuals are talking about; there are trans women who are huge tomboys and have little interest in stereotypically feminine activities, but still desire a female body and feel more comfortable identifying as a woman. It's possible for the the statements "what kind of genitals your brain thinks it should be hooked up to is an inborn trait" and "gender roles, in the sense of stereotypical behaviors and traits associated with each gender, are a social construct" to both be true.

So I'm not going to look at the study, but I have something to point out.

Everything you feel, every memory, every belief, every thought, is biological. Including every socially constructed belief, heuristic and thought. Just because something is socially constructed doesn't mean that it won't have a biological representation in the brain.

Indeed, if the social construct did not effect the brain it wouldn't exist.

Basically, gender is a set of norms and shit that people do, and can be anything and nothing and yadda yadda. However, sex dimorphism is very much a thing (basically there are differences in different sexes) To say that there are only 2 sexes would be very simplistic, however, someone who is a trans woman (someone who was assigned the gender and sex "male" at birth, but is female) has a brain structure that more closely resembles that of a cis woman (someone who was assigned the gender and sex "female" at birth). So basically, they're two different things =)

Furthermore, given you don't seem to be a troll, feel free to ask more questions.

Like most things, I suspect that this, too, is a result of both nature and nurture. Note, also, that our brains form throughout our lives, so they, too, would be influenced by both genetics and social factors.

There has been no corroborative study by another group of researchers.

The lead scientist himself admits that he "isn't sure whether the four regions are at all associated with notions of gender..."

I think there's a problem with the fact that a neuro-biology study is being published in a journal of psychiatry. I'm not saying that there's a problem with the study necessarily because of that, but it does give me pause and would make me cautious about accepting the findings.

As other have mentioned, the researchers seem to rely on the assumption that there are "gender centers" in the brain. This is a controversial assumption and one that should be examined critically.

So--there are some major problems, and these are just from a cursory look at the study methodology and underlying assumptions.

To some extent yes, but not completely. We are inundated with socialization from both sides.

As a kid i was simultaneously told what it was to be a man and what it was to be a woman (according to society). So when i had to apply those molds to myself i had problems because i knew that i had always been grouped with the boys but didnt think I was going to develop as one (this is pre knowledge of puberty). So I conform enough to get by but still have applied a fair amount of society's ideas about women to myself. Especially when it comes to my own personal conception of myself.

Its not a complete socialization as a woman (although since transition I have recieved a fair amount) but I also never fully accepted the social roles of a man. It was submission rather than embracement.